


Stygian blood in the wastelands

by crinkledpages



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Gods, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Established Relationship, Immortal Bonds, M/M, johndo as primordial greek gods and immortal twins who are stranded on earth, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinkledpages/pseuds/crinkledpages
Summary: Doyoung and Johnny. Hypnos and Thanatos. Immortal gods, immortal twins. They’ve been roaming the mortal world for the past three thousand years, and Doyoung is tired, and Johnny, weary. Home is just a fiery portal away, but the thing is, they aren’t welcome anymore. So they’re nomads in the wastelands - Earth - for eternity.
Relationships: Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	Stygian blood in the wastelands

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! This is purely, one hundred percent self-indulgence, and nothing else. 
> 
> I somehow just came across the story of Hypnos and Thanatos and wanted to write something about it because I was kind of drawn to them. Honestly, there’s not a whole lot about them in Greek mythology even though they are one of the primordial gods so this was a way for me to read up more on them ~~ 
> 
> In essence, here is johndo as Greek god twins, please enjoy 😝

Doyoung pillows his head on his right arm, drumming his fingers listlessly against his desk. His long legs stretch beyond the front of his table, tips of his toes almost nudging the chair in front. Boredom is carved into every bit of his unmoving person. Everything illuminated in nothing but bleak rays, these days. 

He tilts his head so that he’s facing left - the window. There’s nothing really exciting about the view outside and below - just the basketball court and blue blue skies. But it captures his attention more than anything else in the classroom. 

Their classroom is three storeys up, but Doyoung can still pick Johnny out from the mangle of bodies pulsing with energy on the court as they dribble, dodge, and leap. Hmmm. 

He peeks open one interested eye, enough so he can watch. He follows Johnny as he feigns a slipping of the ball against his fingers so that Mingyu, who’s on the opposing team, catches it easily. His teammates shout in frustration and Doyoung imagines Johnny with a grin tugging at his lips. Johnny always liked to make things hard on purpose. _To make the win sweeter, Doie._

Three more minutes of tiring tosses between both sides and then he sees it - the black fog - invisible to everyone else - lifting and shifting its loose arms around Johnny, caressing its master. There is unbridled smugness in the way he angles his body, like a wolf tearing through its fake sheepskin, finally revealing its true colours. 

He snatches his opponent’s play for the net with a cleverly-timed jump, his fingers looking like they’ll miss it, but he doesn’t of course, because Johnny’s playing for real now. He catches the ball deftly. Then he’s rushing against the wind, flying across the court to land a three-pointer. Goal. 

Doyoung claps for him in his head. He hasn’t shifted from this spot, this posture, in nearly twenty minutes. His eyes are still on Johnny and they’re three storeys too far apart for Johnny to realistically see him. Yet when Johnny looks up to the row of windows high above the concrete court, his true, deep black eyes bore straight into Doyoung. 

There’s no shiver of excitement or surprise colouring his eyes. Rather, Doyoung merely wiggles his fingers, a hello, a congratulations, and then his hands fall limp against the desk once more. 

Doyoung dozes for another forty-five minutes, doesn’t even budge when the lunch bell sounds.

***

A gentle scratching at the back of his head. That’s what pulls Doyoung out of his short slumber. 

“Sleeping in literature again?” Johnny’s mouth hovers just above his ear. His fingers are still curled into Doyoung’s hair. He wonders if he’d washed his hands or showered after the game. 

“We were covering The Iliad.”

Johnny nods in understanding, judgement fading from his eyes. “Ah. Of course.”

Yes. Of course. They both know the histories so well themselves. Better than the teacher, and infinitely better than Homer, who had captured only but a smidgen of their universe. 

Johnny untangles his hand from Doyoung’s hair. His fingers brush the shell of his ear. He knows it’s on purpose, and he ignores the burning stares when Johnny tugs on his ear lobe affectionately. Neither of them truly care who watches them, but he still likes to be cautious, prefers to toe the line between teasing and pure carelessness. 

“You could have ended the game earlier,” he whines as he sits up. His stomach has been churning since mid-morning, and he regrets waiting the extra half hour after the lunch bell for Johnny to skip by. When he’s properly sat up, he realises that Johnny had showered after all; the ends of his hair are still dripping with water, cheeks a pretty rosy pink from the shower. 

“Come on, you know that’s no fun at all.” Johnny drags the vacant chair in front of Doyoung out to plop onto, pulling out his lunchbox. He gestures for Doyoung to do the same. 

“I saw you wave.” Johnny starts on the vegetables first, plucking out all the tomatoes to dump in Doyoung’s box before attacking the diced peas, carrots, and corn. Doyoung does the same with his cucumber slices, placing it in Johnny’s box. 

It’s funny because Johnny still doles out even portions of their food every day, even when they both know that half of each other’s box will make its way into the other’s in the end. 

“I saw you purposely miss three shots in the name of fun. That cost you an extra ten minutes.”

Johnny groans around his last spoon of mixed vegetables. “Really? You still haven’t moved past this? You were sleeping anyway.”

“If I hadn’t slept, I might have died from focusing on my hunger,” he says, stabbing viciously at the tomatoes with his chopsticks. 

“Well. There’s never too much sleep you can get.” Johnny arches his brows, and it’s meant to be a joke and a pun, of course. 

“That wasn’t funny.” Doyoung’s glares are never half-hearted - one could always feel the full brunt of it, even when he wasn’t really all that angry. He just liked to intimidate everyone into thinking that, because he could. Sometimes, he’s so used to letting every tiny irritation flood his emotions that it’s easier to just become it, rather than rein it in. But Johnny doesn’t mind. He likes it, even, when Doyoung’s eyes would darken over the teeniest gaffe. But it’s probably because he’s the only one who knows how to smoothen his edges, so he gets the satisfaction of both riling him up and bringing that down to a gentle simmer. 

“It kind of was.” 

Doyoung just stuffs a tomato into Johnny’s mouth, violence flaming in his eyes, mouth pursed in annoyance. Johnny can tell that he’s only half-angry, so Johnny takes up the role laid out for him, yelling in indignation as he swallows the stupid cherry tomato whole. 

“You’ll be the death of me,” Doyoung sighs, pressing his lips against his plastic chopsticks. There are baby blue bunnies printed at the top. Johnny’s has shiba inus. They’d gotten them from some one-dollar shop three years ago when they’d first set foot in Seoul and gone shopping around the area, getting to know their new camp. 

“Wow, if that wasn’t true I’d actually laugh.” Johnny does let out a cackle despite his words, because it’s still funny. The beginnings of a smile worm its way onto Doyoung’s lips and he ducks his head to hide it. Johnny beams back at him, human brown eyes bright and sparkling. 

He spies the single poppy tattooed innocently on Doyoung’s upper arm through the thin white school uniform. It’s a mirror of the butterfly on his own upper arm. He holds back from rubbing a finger over it because Doyoung surely won’t allow it - it’s too open. Instead, he settles for squeezing his wrist. 

Thanatos and Hypnos. Death and Sleep. 

The classroom is half-full with Doyoung’s classmates sharing their lunchboxes with each other around their own tables, and Johnny can feel multiple sets of eyes on his back. Most of the stares are of envy, but a precious few are laced with spite. 

If he tries hard enough, he’ll be able to see how grey or black their souls are, maybe even when their time will be up. His fists curl tighter around his chopsticks. He could summon a night spirit with a snap of his fingers, right here and now. Just something small but stark enough to frighten. 

He feels a poke at his hand, drawing him back to himself. When Doyoung is around, the light everywhere seems to dim, shrinking and shrugging into a ball until it hugs him in a warm golden aura.

“Don’t. Johnny, look at me. Don’t.” 

He relaxes, fingers moving to bring the egg roll to his lips, but his mouth is still twisted into a smirk as he chews the neatly rolled yellow rolls. He’s glad that his back is facing the rest of the class, because then they can’t see his eyes glimmer bright gold to sea green to light grey to full black in a matter of seconds. 

“Aww. You’re upset. It’s cute.”

“You can’t go around playing like that and showing off. You’re going to make a mistake one day. I keep telling you that.” He leans forward to whisper. His mouth is angled into its usual exasperated downward curl, reserved mainly for Johnny and for moments like this one. 

Johnny can’t wait to kiss it off later.

***

This is their six hundredth-and-something go at life on the mortal plane. That is - give or take - about three thousand years here. 

Johnny likes to try to keep count, because it’s fun. Two cycles ago they were car salesmen, five cycles ago they were soldiers in the First World War. And thirty ago they were...Johnny shakes his head. Maybe they had been in feudal Japan. Or in the Renaissance? Yes, it had been the Renaissance. Doyoung wouldn’t have missed that experience for the world, so yes. They’d probably been in Italy, splashing the stuccos of the Sistine Chapel with warring, lurid colours alongside Michaelangelo and Raphael. 

The recent years have been droll. Is there anything here as thrilling as the luminous balls in ancient palaces, or as riveting as donning Pierrot masks during Carnevales, painted striking colours of blue, red, and purple, a single teardrop dotting the rims of the eyes? 

Gods, how Johnny misses pulling Doyoung through the crowds and into the famously confounding and narrow streets of Venice, pushing him up against the dirty and faded red brick walls and finding his lips through the dreadfully thin and tiny hole in the mask, kissing each other senseless amidst a collective mass of the rich and poor alike dancing to raucous music. 

“I’m tired.” Doyoung murmurs to him in bed one night. He’s shirtless, as he’s wont to be during the summer when even the evenings are warm and it feels too hot to do anything, let alone get up from bed. 

Summer to autumn. Autumn to winter. Winter to Spring. The seasons ebb and flow with either extreme vigour or listlessness. Never both. Doyoung is growing weary from this cycle and Johnny knows it’s too fast too soon to leave, but he too can feel the heavy torpor of the new century.

It’s catching up to Doyoung. The ennui. That depressive state of nothing that he’s seen only twice in his entire lifetime on Earth of nearly four thousand years. Once was right after they’d been cast out. The second was after they’d encountered Pasithea, his immortal betrothed, in the late 1300s after the events of the Black Death.

The Black Death - where everywhere Johnny had looked, he’d seen souls upon souls reflecting a dreary black back at him, time counting down too unfairly fast for them - tomorrow, next week, tick tock tick tock. There had been so many butterflies. 

And then their last meeting with Pasithea. Lovely, gentle, Pasithea. She had been in mortal form, dark grey cloak wrapped tightly about her person, shielding her glowing beauty from the world. She’d climbed and settled high up in the Himalayas, choosing a life of seclusion and celibacy after living through the countless wars and cruelty of men, and then a pervasion of death. 

Doyoung had kissed her forehead sweetly with a sad smile and left her in her cave, knowing it was the last time he would ever lay eyes on her. Then he’d shut himself out from Johnny for the next few years, travelling beside him from city to countryside to rural open plains to city, but his mind lost; a walking phantom. Those days and nights had been a nightmare for Johnny, never knowing when he’d wake up and see the lifelessness fall from his shoulders. 

“I’m tired,” Doyoung says again, rolls over and speaks this into his mouth. When Johnny slides his hands up his body, it’s hot all over, like he’s the source of the fires in Tartarus. 

“I know,” he replies. He draws a stream of grey mist-stick figures on Doyoung’s palm, drowning in the many oubliettes in Tartarus. In his drawings, he tries to reimagine their expressions of agony as their souls sunk into eternal unrest. 

The mist settles and appears to seep into his pale skin. Johnny presses long kisses to each knuckle. “I know, my love.”

“Can we leave?”

Johnny looks up at him, noting how the putrid light filtering in through the window is no match for the glow of the fires in the underworld and how it would rake Doyoung in a shimmering orange radiance. He is a god, and gods belong in the realm of the gods.

“You know it’s too early,” he reminds him, even as he feels his heart melting and silently acquiescing. He could never say no to Doyoung. Not in their shared cave in the underworld, poppies littered all around, when Doyoung had asked him to side with the Trojans against Zeus and Athena, and certainly not here. 

Above him, Doyoung shakes his dark head, irises splitting into half gold and half red, an eternal war raging within him. Johnny can see their Gaian mother in him - all Chaos and Darkness - someone whom even Zeus feared. 

“I want to. You know I always want to give in to you, but we’ve only been here for three years. That’s almost ten years too early.” He cups his hand over Doyoung’s cheek, stroking the soft skin, feeling how his jaw stiffens with stubbornness. Doyoung shifts away and out of the touch. Johnny tries not to feel slighted. 

“Then give in now,” Doyoung begs. “Playing schoolboy is wearing thin on me. This isn’t like how we were in Japan, studying under the samurai, learning their ways of the sword. I would even trade this for Chengdu. At least we learned a different language. Wore beautiful _hanfu_. Wrote on scrolls with quills dipped in ink. There was _culture_.”

Johnny rolls his eyes. 

“Two years. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Let’s finish the CSATs at the very least. I want to know if I’m smart enough to get into the SKY universities.”

Doyoung’s narrows his eyes, and the outer rings of his eyes darken to a deep black at how Johnny’s words trip with lightness. “Must you make jokes out of everything? Earth isn’t our playhouse.”

“You know you’re being overly impatient. Two years. Then we’ll go.”

Doyoung sucks his lip between his teeth, still hovering above Johnny, skin just shy from making contact. If Johnny nudged an inch forward, his chest would brush Doyoung’s. Just an inch.

But he lets Doyoung make the call, because he seems to be edging into one of his signature thorny moods. 

“Two years.” Johnny urges with as much gentleness he can layer into his voice as he can muster. He reaches out a hand to hang just shy of his hair, making a show of being careful. 

“Two years,” Doyoung whispers back to himself. He exhales loudly, drops his head in answer on Johnny’s chest and at first, Johnny thinks he’s actually managed to convince him with pure pragmatism, for once. 

He feels a sudden wetness on his left arm, followed by a piercing bite. 

“Ow! Doyoung!” Instinct takes over, and his body moves to shove his head off with brute force. 

Doyoung catches his hand mid-air and slams it back down onto the bed. He trails his tongue over the outline of the black butterfly, then sucks hard. Johnny moans as the tattoo - the physical embodiment of their bond - burns at the touch of his immortal twin.

Hot white light flashes behind his eyelids, and his head spins as it throws up mental images of them in the black-leaved gardens, playing with their mother and their sisters, the Fates, twining black poppies into their hair. 

Then it shifts to them lying languidly in their little cave, basking in discovering and rediscovering each other’s bodies, the rushing waters of the five infernal rivers building up a beautiful rhythm of calm around them. 

He chokes on another memory of them when they’d first kissed, on the plains of Elysium, when they’d visited the blessed few whose souls would only know pleasure in the afterlife. Johnny had been a little jealous at their happiness, because the pits of Tartarus only bore screams of agony. 

But then Doyoung had pulled him onto a field of lilies and pressed his lips shyly against his. Cheeks tinged a deepening pink, long hair curtaining his eyes. And all his envy had been replaced by his sheer adoration for his twin standing opposite him, asking rather abashedly for his attention. And he's found that nothing can ever replace that limitless joy he feels when he's with Doyoung.

“You’re not seriously thinking that this will work on me, are you?” He says through clenched teeth in short breaths, because Doyoung is still peppering kisses to his butterfly, tongue laving on the tip of a wing. He grabs him by the chin. Forces him to look at him. 

_“Doyoung.”_

“Yield. Why won’t you just give in?”

“Too fast.” He repeats again. A shallow excuse maybe, because they’ve done this hundreds of times, and they’ve always moved whenever the inkling came upon them. But it’s one of those times when obstinance comes through just for the sake of argument. 

Doyoung draws back. “You like it here,” he says in wonder. “You do. Gods.”

“Maybe.” Johnny turns his head away. Drops his grip on his chin. 

“One year,” Doyoung compromises, pleads. “One year, and we’ll wage terror in another place.”

Johnny laughs but his heart is warm, the burden lighter. He reaches up to kiss the poppy adorning Doyoung’s arm, swiping his tongue across it in much the same way Doyoung had earlier.

His twin’s eyes flutter closed as pleasure builds, their bond pulled taut with desire. Johnny wraps a hand around his nape and pulls him down to kiss him harder, drawing his legs up and around him to have him that much closer. Doyoung follows, breathing out softly against his shoulder.

“You should sleep.”

“All I ever _do_ is sleep,” Doyoung growls.

Johnny traces a finger over his eyes, feeling how the smooth curves of his eyelids dip under the pads of his fingers. Here is where he would place the coins over the dead, before gently laying them in Charon’s ferry. “An eternal sleep, then.”

“Mmm. Are you volunteering?” 

Sometimes they play pretend like this because gods such as themselves tended to get bored after centuries of immortality. Sometimes, Johnny isn’t sure when Doyoung is acting or truly serious. 

“No, that’s your job,” he whispers. 

“Then take a lock of my hair.” Doyoung runs his hand through his own hair, plucking a single strand to dangle over Johnny’s nose. Johnny starts to say no - don’t ever say that, don’t you ever, but Doyoung cuts him off with two fingers to his lips. 

“I go to take him now, and dedicate him with my sword, for all whose hair is cut in consecration by this blade's edge are devoted to the gods below,” Doyoung murmurs the famous line Thanatos had uttered to Apollo when he’d come to collect the soul of Alcestis, only changing the ‘her’ to ‘him’.

Johnny looks up at him with unconcealed fondness. 

“If only we had mortal souls. I’d carry lay coins over your eyes and carry you over the Acheron myself if it meant we could go back home.” His hand is deathly cold when he catches it to brush his lips over those pale, slender fingers once more, kissing a litany of promises he isn’t sure he can keep on each one. 

He can’t promise him anything but that he’ll stay by his side, bonded forever. 

Doyoung smiles wistfully and collapses back onto the bed, half-lying on Johnny’s chest. He curls tighter around him, legs slipping and wrapping in-between his thighs. 

Johnny can feel him between his legs, but he doesn’t move or press harder against him. 

“We’re not mortals, Johnny. We’re gods.” Doyoung bristles. 

“Sometimes, I wish we weren’t. Gods are never really remembered, but then we’re expected to come to the aid of mortals wherever, whenever. And if we don’t, they turn on us. Even those halfling demigods are lauded as heroes always, with Elysium open to them at the end.”

Johnny’s nose wrinkles ruefully. Doyoung lets out a deep breath to demonstrate his agreement and his sadness at the inevitability of it all. Talking is useless. This is how they were always going to be - drifting on Earth, caught between the sullen, dreary plane of Olympus and Erebos. 

He moves to press the tip of his forefinger to the space between Johnny’s eyes.

“Sleep,” he commands with the gentlest voice he can muster. 

Johnny yields to the slithers of grey curling over his eyes.

***

They end up staying for only another six months. 

“I think these ones taste better,” Johnny sniffs the fig in his left palm, holding it out to Doyoung to take a whiff too. They look and smell like the ones that used to grow in great plumes in giant hectares in Olympus, when they’d visit their cousins, all of them primordial deities gathered together just once a year to pay respects to the five great ones - the firsts of their kind. 

“They probably do,” Doyoung agrees. “Let’s get a bag of them?”

Marrakech is a furnace. Not as sweltering as when you stood over the Titans’ pits in Tartarus, but this was still hot enough to burn. Trapped in their feeble human flesh, Doyoung is dismayed to find that his bare shoulders ache with a tender burn, skin reddening into a dark red bruise. It will peel over in the next few days, marring the smooth skin with horrible wrinkles and scabs. 

They’ve been here only two days, now weaving through a souk with no real objective in mind; adventure is open to them. Their clothes are sweat-sticky and hands over-laden with paper bags of dried fruit that Johnny had managed to haggle down to near its original price because he’d spoken fluent Arabic to the shopkeepers.

“Oh gods, this actually hurts,” he hisses, back arching into a rather uncomfortable ramrod straight posture to cut out more movement. 

Gently, Johnny slides his sling bag off his shoulders and loops it over his own instead. Then he’s pulling on his wrist to drag them into a stall selling a wondrous selection of Moroccan-tile silk fabrics, bursting with dazzling colours and hanging in neat racks that line the floor to the apex of the makeshift tent. 

Johnny drapes a long pashmina scarf over his head and around his body. This one is a striking cobalt blue, with a simple chain of interlocking geometric patterns in gold filigree along one side. 

“Here, how about this one?”

Doyoung looks about the little stall, eliminating those that were too bright or had patterns that were a little too flashy for his taste. He lifts the ends of the shawl from around his shoulders to regard it more closely. Johnny watches, eyes slightly anxious as Doyoung ruminates. 

“I do like this one,” he finally says, which draws a blinding smile from Johnny.

“We’ll take this,” Johnny says to the delighted shopkeeper, who gestures excitedly to another splendid array of scarves for Johnny to consider for himself. Johnny shakes his head. “I like the sun,” he says, leaving the shopkeeper bewildered and Doyoung grinning in private understanding. 

He pulls out a mass of notes and coins to pay. With a single thought and a spark of power, Doyoung changes the coins in his purse from drachmas to dirhams, because they don’t actually have any money or real currency. They never have, merely relying on their abilities to cheat their way through. 

What was the use of banks, when they were nomadic? Their compass is where their feet itch to explore next, and their map, their souls. They don’t look to the stars, because the stars have shown them nothing but scorn.

“If I could put us in the stars, where would we be?” Johnny had asked once, when they had carried out Apollo’s orders and brought Sarpedon’s heroic and beaten body to rest in Lycia. 

“We’re children of the night, we don’t need to be part of a constellation,” Doyoung had said, voice hard. “The sun will never shine over us, even if we do this one good thing, or a thousand other honourable deeds.”

“You’re right,” Johnny had whispered. And if his eyes had conveyed a longing far out of their reach, Doyoung hadn’t mentioned it. It’s a look that he sometimes sees flickering in the shadow of his eyes until today.

***

The days are warm and the nights are freezing cold, cold enough to slice his face painfully. But it’s a new place that brooks new pleasures. To Doyoung, the sandy desert air is fresher than the snow-filled winds in Seoul. 

They’ve set up camp in the Sahara, backs pressed against the cool sand and eyes turned up to the night sky. Their hair and clothes billow from the chilly wind every few minutes until it’s become a chore for Johnny to continuously sweep his hair back over his forehead. 

Their tent stands upright behind them but they’ve chosen to lie outside and admire the Saharan sky and wide plains of dunes for a little while longer. They’re not afraid of wild animals or robbers, because well, what or who could touch them and still keep their lives?

Doyoung has curled his brand new pashmina scarf around his body, hugging the soft silk to his face like a lifeline. From the way he’s refused to take it off the entire day, Johnny knows he’ll be finding creative ways to have this match his daily outfits. 

“We can go inside if you’re cold.”

“I’ve got this to keep me warm.” He pulls on the scarf, brushing over the geometric patterns reverently. Unlike Johnny, his hair is tousled in messy tangles about his forehead and over his eyes, because he simply couldn’t be bothered to do anything about the wind. 

Johnny wraps a finger around a couple of strands - soft and silky to the touch. Another blessing of the gods. He twists it between his fingers while Doyoung watches him silently from the corner of his eye.

“You don’t have to torture yourself with the stars.” Johnny insists. “Let’s go inside and have some supper. Play some cards, hmm?”

“The stars don’t bother me. Not anymore.” Doyoung assures him with an adamant look that spells: I’m not delicate, Johnny, you don’t have to worry. 

But he does worry. He can’t ever not worry, whenever it comes to Doyoung. 

A touch to his cheek is just what Johnny has been wanting all evening - just Doyoung’s touch, really. His scent, those lips against his - heady like ambrosia. 

“Maybe you don’t feel anything anymore, but I do. It still hurts, to look up and around and know you don’t belong anywhere anymore. Anywhere we go doesn’t really matter. They’re just towns and buildings painted different colours and washed with different languages.” 

Verbalising his own feelings is exactly like broaching unfamiliar territory. For Doyoung, it’s as easy as singing his sweet hypnotic chants to mortals and gods and goddesses alike, but Johnny would rather be chained to Tartarus than show even a wink of vulnerability. He’d like to think that the rush of the alien air and sand around them is to blame for his sudden talkativeness. 

“Johnny, it’s impossible to go back. We can’t. Zeus and Hera made sure of it.” There is that longing in Doyoung’s eyes too, it’s just that he’s always managed to hide it better than him. 

“Of course I know that,” he snaps. “I was there too. It’s just that sometimes I can’t help but wish it. I hate all of them, but it was home.”

Doyoung remains silent, and it’s cloying, all the thoughts swirling in their heads but not knowing the correct words to pick and make fit into an innocuous sentence. Then, softly: “What if I want to stay instead?” 

Doyoung bends his head low, feeling small about his fickle mind. One moment he wants to leave, the next he wants to stay. He is so weak. So, so weak without his twin to steady his eddy of foibles. 

“You are not weak.” Johnny cups his face with both hands. “You are not weak, brother, for wanting to stay out of happiness. If you want to stay, we stay. And if you want to barrel through the gates to the underworld, I’ll be your sword.”

Doyoung’s eyes shine, a film of tears glimmering over his eyes. 

“And when we’ve conquered every corner of the world? When we’ve run out of new names? Where will we go? Who will we be?”

“We go home. If you desire it.” Johnny’s face has on that determined streak, and it’s a shadow of the god who carried withered souls to their peaceful deaths like his armour. Doyoung wishes to see that godliness again. Those wings that would sprout from his back, butterflies hovering above shoulders, an indication of who would be his next to collect - obsidian glory in repose. 

“How?”

“I don’t know. But I promise you, I will find a way, even if I have to kill and wreak havoc in the underworld so that they sit up and pay attention to the storm.”

“You would kill.” He murmurs it as a statement. 

He’s pulling Johnny on top of him in a flurry, planting feverish-hot kisses on his mouth. His hands wind tight against the back of his neck, nails digging in crescents into his skin. 

Gods, he is his, and Doyoung is Johnny’s, and he never wants them to be apart. 

“You’re right,” he sighs as he licks further into his mouth, the lingering sweetness of the figs a lovely surprise. “The figs do taste like how I remember.”

Johnny lifts his twin into his strong arms, mouth breathing hot air into Doyoung’s as he carries him into the tent and lays him back onto the ground. 

He pulls a series of whimpers from him when he sucks a trail of marks down his neck and on his Adam’s apple, and the sounds compel him to scoot lower to kiss the poppy on his arm. 

Doyoung’s scream is a shrill one, and his eyes are blown as black as the night. Johnny doesn’t attempt to cover his mouth. The constellations of gods and goddesses can watch as they claim each other, showing them that they’re far from lesser gods - that they had been here first, even before the time of the Olympians, and even the Titans. To rule was - is - their birthright.

The Saharan wind roars angrily about them, as if a reflection of the fury of the gods. Johnny wraps his arms around Doyoung, pulling him into his chest, fitting themselves together perfectly. 

The tent flutters, and a dark grey mist claws its way through. The two of them sit up quickly, tense, hands curled into a half-ball to draw their powers out if need be. 

But then the mist morphs into a single poppy and a butterfly, and Doyoung’s shoulders drop in relief. “Mother,” he breathes. He touches a hand to the floating poppy, fingers passing through the incorporeal image. 

Red bleeds onto the poppy where he’s touched it. When he pulls away, the poppy shimmers back to its original grey. Doyoung hums a soft ‘ah’. 

Johnny touches a hand to his own mark as the butterfly flits wildly above his shoulder. He copies Doyoung, reaching out a finger out in wonder, in disbelief, a jolt of warmth seeping into him as he makes contact with the misty butterfly. 

The butterfly fans one wing, as if acknowledging the touch. Its scales ripple briefly, the grey on its veins shifting to a spark of fiery orange, returning to grey in a single flap. Then the ghostly visages dissipate, leaving them to themselves in quiet solace. 

“That was Mother,” Johnny can’t help but echo Doyoung, because the shock of Nyx’s visitation still hasn’t worn off yet. 

And this is a gift from her. A reassurance, that she was watching over them, that the great goddess wouldn’t turn away from them, even if everyone else had.

Doyoung settles back into Johnny’s embrace, bubbling with a rare sight of peacefulness. 

“Sleep,” he whispers. 

Johnny nods, wrapping a hand around his stomach. 

“Sing me a lullaby?”

Doyoung hums a song he’d made up in their cave, the same one that he had eventually used as a chant to call Zeus to a temporary sleep while he rushed to save the Trojans. 

Content. That’s the feeling that stirs the air now. Johnny can feel the riff of power coiling through him at the thought of raining down a thunderous battle to open the gates to the underworld, and he knows he can. He can feel it. He sends that through the bond. Wants Doyoung to feel as strong as he does. 

Doyoung intertwines their hands, squeezing Johnny’s hand in answer. He feels a gentle press of lips against his forehead and through the bond he feels a surge of love and want and hope and freedom. The song reaches it end, Doyoung’s mellow voice filtering out into breathy whispers as he drifts off. Johnny keeps his hand clasped tightly around his twin’s, fingers loosening only when Doyoung’s grey tendrils envelop then both and pull them into a gentle sleep. 

Around them, the grey fog settles into an invisible barricade, swishing and lapping above and around the tent like a mirage of the underworld, of their home.

**Author's Note:**

> if you got to the end of my self-indulgence, THANK YOU. Look at me contributing to the johndo tag ~
> 
> Come talk to me in the comments or on [twt](https://twitter.com/moonkyoung_)!!


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